Hacker News Scraper & Keyword Monitor: Stories + Comments

Know when Hacker News talks about your brand, your product, your competitors or your technology. This Actor searches stories and comments (plus Show HN, Ask HN, polls and jobs) through the official Algolia HN Search API and returns every mention with points, comment count, author, links and the story a comment belongs to.

Turn on "only new" and schedule it hourly or daily: each run returns only mentions you have not received yet. Connect the dataset to Slack, email, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier or n8n for instant alerts.

What does Hacker News Scraper do?

Hacker News Scraper searches Hacker News through the official Algolia HN API for your brand, product, competitors or any keyword: stories, comments, Show HN and Ask HN, with points, comment count, author and links. Its only-new mode returns new mentions since the last run, for daily Slack or email alerts.

How to use Hacker News Scraper

1. Click Try for free on this page (a free Apify account is enough to start).
2. Fill in the input (see the examples below) or keep the prefilled example.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download the results from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them with the Apify API.
5. Optional: create a Schedule to run it daily or weekly, and connect a webhook or an integration (Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack).

Who uses it

• Founders and marketers: catch launches, reviews and complaints about your product the moment they appear.
• DevRel: find threads where your library, API or framework is mentioned and join the conversation.
• Competitive intelligence: follow competitors' launches (Show HN) and how the community reacts.
• Investors and researchers: track topics and technologies over time.

Features

• Several keywords per run; phrases with spaces are searched as exact phrases.
• Exact word match on by default: the search engine also returns typo and prefix matches; this keeps only items where your keyword really appears in the title, URL or text (a comment matches on its own text).
• Filters: item types, minimum points and comments for stories, authors to exclude (e.g. your own team).
• Items found by several keywords appear once, with all matchedKeywords.
• Only new mode with separate memory per alert name; re-reads a short overlap so late-indexed items are not missed, without duplicates.
• Comment HTML converted to clean text; links kept.

Input example

{
  "keywords": ["apify", "web scraping", "crawlee"],
  "types": ["story", "comment"],
  "daysBack": 7,
  "onlyNew": true,
  "alertName": "brand-daily",
  "excludeAuthors": ["my_teammate"]
}

Output

{
  "id": "50235676",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "Website to Markdown – keyless HTML→clean Markdown for RAG, pay-per-use",
  "url": "https://apify.com/noniner/website-to-markdown",
  "domain": "apify.com",
  "text": null,
  "author": "fredxhansson",
  "points": 2,
  "numComments": 0,
  "createdAt": "2026-10-25T20:20:04Z",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235676",
  "storyId": "50235676",
  "storyTitle": "Website to Markdown – keyless HTML→clean Markdown for RAG, pay-per-use",
  "storyUrl": null,
  "parentId": null,
  "matchedKeywords": ["apify"],
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-26T22:50:00.000Z"
}

type is story, comment, show_hn, ask_hn, poll or job. For comments, storyTitle / storyUrl / storyId tell you which thread it is in and parentId what it replies to. Newest first.

Pricing

Pay per event:

• USD 0.01 per run (start).
• USD 1 per 1,000 items returned (USD 0.001 each).

Items filtered out, duplicates across keywords and (in "only new" mode) items already delivered are not charged. A run with no new mentions costs only the start fee.

Notes

• Data comes from the public Algolia HN Search API (the search used by news.ycombinator.com), queried politely (about 2 requests per second).
• Points and comment counts are a snapshot at run time; they keep growing on HN.
• The API returns at most 1,000 results per keyword per run; use a shorter window or more specific keywords for very common words.

Cost examples

Prices at the current pay-per-event rate: USD 0.01 per run and USD 1.00 per 1,000 items (filtered items, duplicates and items already delivered in only-new mode are free). You can set a maximum charge per run in the run options.

Job	Approximate cost
Test run: 2 keywords, last 3 days (measured: 4 items, 4 s)	about $0.014
Daily brand monitor in only-new mode (~10 new mentions)	about $0.02 per run
Research: 500 stories and comments about a topic	about $0.51
Hourly monitor, 24 runs a day with ~2 new items each	about $0.29 per day

Use it from your code, an integration or an AI agent

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("latamdatatools/hacker-news-monitor").call(run_input={
  "keywords": [
    "apify",
    "web scraping"
  ],
  "types": [
    "story",
    "comment"
  ],
  "daysBack": 7,
  "onlyNew": True,
  "alertName": "brand-daily"
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["type"], item["author"], item["hnUrl"], item["matchedKeywords"])

JavaScript / Node.js (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('latamdatatools/hacker-news-monitor').call({
  keywords: [
    'apify',
    'web scraping'
  ],
  types: [
    'story',
    'comment'
  ],
  daysBack: 7,
  onlyNew: true,
  alertName: 'brand-daily'
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.map((i) => [i.type, i.hnUrl, i.matchedKeywords]));

No code:

• Schedules: save your input as a Task and run it every hour or every morning from Apify Console (Schedules).
• Integrations: send the results to Google Sheets, Slack, email, Make, Zapier, n8n or Airbyte from the Integrations tab, or call your own webhook when a run finishes.
• AI agents: add it as a tool in Claude, Cursor, VS Code and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so the agent can check what Hacker News says about a product, company or topic.

FAQ

Can I call it from my own code or from an AI agent? Yes. Start runs and fetch results with the Apify API or the JavaScript / Python clients, or use it as a tool from Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Can I run it automatically? Yes. Create a Schedule in Apify Console (for example every morning) and add a webhook or an integration to get the results where you need them.

Which export formats are available? JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS and HTML table, from the Output tab or the API.

What does it cost? See the Pricing section above. You only pay for the events listed there.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-10): first version.